The 2025 Lisbon Architecture Triennale, curated by Ann-Sofi Rönnskog and John Palmesino, poses the ambitious question "How Heavy is a City?" but ultimately fails to deliver on its promise due to an overwhelming reliance on video presentations and impractical exhibition design. The event, which runs until December 8, brings together academics, scientists, and architects across three themed exhibitions but suffers from what critics are calling "screen fatigue."

The historical context for the triennale draws from the devastating 1755 earthquake that struck 200 kilometers off the Portuguese coast on November 1. According to Kathryn Yussof, a Queen Mary University professor of inhuman geography and curatorial team member of the current British Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, this disaster made Lisbon the center of the world. Nearly the entire city collapsed, up to 40,000 residents died, and the economic and political shockwaves were felt across Europe. Yussof, speaking at "Talk Talk Talk," a discussion series expanding ideas from the triennale at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, explained that this was the first modern disaster because it generated a coordinated state-wide and Europe-wide response.

The earthquake established architectural planning principles designed to mitigate future disasters, with Yussof noting that "the disaster became mapped into the governance of infrastructures and imaginations of urban planning as a sociality of risk and preparedness." The current triennale's curators, both AA Diploma masters and founders of Territorial Agency, hope to use current global issues as a catalyst to generate new ideas in science, engineering, and city planning.

The exhibition is divided into three themed sections: Fluxes (examining intersections of artificial spaces), Spectres (focusing on imaging technologies), and Lighter (exploring experiments in living within the troubled dynamics of the technosphere). However, the execution falls far short of these ambitious goals. Two of the exhibitions consist primarily of large grids of ceiling-mounted horizontal flat screens, expecting visitors to stand and watch each film before moving sideways to the next screen.

The impractical presentation format would require visitors to spend approximately 10 hours hunched over screens across the three sites if they wanted to view all the films. Palmesino defends this approach, explaining that he doesn't expect visitors to watch everything but rather "be struck by a puzzlement of what is happening." He argues that "instead of the procedural presentation of conditions that we already know, we are putting in place this horizontal landscape where you have to build your own engagement." He acknowledges that "it demands a lot of work and demands to reconsider figure ground," describing it as "the classical problem of making an architectural exhibition: you can only show representation and experiences of architecture."

Visitors, however, appear unconvinced by this rationale. Observers report seeing people walk around the monitor grids looking confused before quickly departing for better-curated exhibitions elsewhere, including the Vivienne Westwood exhibition at MUDE, Cerith Wyn Evans at MAAT, and displays at MAC/CCB. The exhibition at MAC/CCB stands out as "one of the best architecture-adjacent exhibitions" the reviewer has seen, featuring a beautiful study of Avenida 211, a temporary Lisbon artist space that examined urban policy, heritage, and civic agency beyond just the artworks created there.

Despite the problematic media choices, each exhibition begins promisingly with well-presented projects that weave together information and poetry. At MUDE, a projected installation by singer Patti Smith and Soundwalk Collective transforms devastating global wildfire data into an immersive atmosphere through poetic readings of dates, locations, and areas lost against sonic and visual representations of infernos. At MAC/CCB, Belgian artist Adrien Lucca's botanical sculpture explores how artificial light affects nature, offering visitors a rare opportunity to engage with something other than a screen.

At MAAT, artist Katherinne Fiedler's remarkable film triptych "Guardians" (2024) documents the construction of the Museo Nacional del Perú, designed by leonmarcial arquitectos. This museum, the largest in Latin America, was completed in 2021 but remains empty. Fiedler's work explores this empty space by following stray dogs that seem to act as guardians, connecting pre-Columbian iconography with themes of political abandonment, nature's return, and the relationship between ancient and modern elements.

Notably, the most compelling works come from artists rather than architects. However, when Fiedler's artistic work is treated as an academic tool, it loses much of its meaning and impact. While her film offers rich visual storytelling about political abandonment and the connection between past and present, the accompanying text fails to mention any of these themes, instead offering what critics describe as "an impenetrable lump of architecture-school jargon" that leaves visitors without answers about the building or the dogs featured in the film.

A recent reconfiguration of the MAC/CCB space by Bureau architects, featuring curtained areas, appeared to force the curators away from installing a third room of hanging screens, resulting in the most interesting space to navigate. At its deepest point, visitors could find an actual physical architectural model—the only one across all exhibitions—though its connection to video works by Alexander Zikanov and Paul Vécsei remained unclear due to more jargon-heavy explanatory text.

Far more interesting and creative ideas emerge from the triennale's Independent Projects, selected through an open call. These projects, ranging from student initiatives to artist-led installations, demonstrate more aesthetic consideration and creative delivery methods than the main exhibitions. Highlights include "The Technate" by Peter Behrbohm and Markus Bühler, a psychogeographic journey from Los Angeles to Vancouver that mirrors the 1947 Technocracy Inc. movement overseen by Elon Musk's grandfather and foreshadows today's techno-fascist agenda.

"Where Waters Fall" by Brrum presents a spare, conceptual installation examining how digital technologies both document and control, using the example of a once-magnificent Sámi waterfall that has now dried up. The strongest works engage directly with Lisbon and Portugal. Lily Wong and Xiaoxi Chen explore the weight of a city's colonial legacy through ornamental textiles that conflate Macau's heritage with Portuguese colonial histories.

Lisbon's botanical garden hosts what many consider the triennale's best work: a rich, witty, and intellectually curious audio guide by Arkitekturens Grannar/Neighbours of Architecture. This piece interrogates the history and meaning of the displayed nature as well as the material and form of the architecture that contains it, successfully engaging the public with accessible yet critical ideas about their city.

A particularly important project by Tiago Patatas documents a local community in the Barroso region of northern Portugal as they work to prevent lithium mining on commonly owned land. Their story of organizing through extractivism activism provides valuable lessons in social and environmental organization through direct action, songwriting, and involving different community members, including those unable to physically access the hillside site.

Patatas was among several speakers at "Talk Talk Talk," which serves as an excellent element of the triennale, helping visitors make sense of the main exhibitions. Yara Sharif and Nasser Golzari of Architects for Gaza found optimism within destruction, discussing communities' hope to self-organize and rebuild without imported plans and masterplans. Eyal Weizman also addressed the genocide, situating it within a longer timeframe to demonstrate a pattern of behavior toward both people and nature. Thai architect Supawut Boonmahathanakorn presented a joyous eight-year project to rewild a Chiang Mai river, transforming not only the natural environment but also the civic engagement of an entire community.

Contemporary Lisbon faces modern urban challenges, as witnessed in the recent Ascensor da Glória funicular crash that resulted in 16 fatalities. Just as 250 years ago, today's Lisbon can symbolize many issues of modern urbanity while potentially providing ingredients for progressive, people-led solutions. However, the main exhibitions of this triennale look far and wide but rarely examine the place itself, and not in a language or medium that might engage and energize Lisboetas to help them understand and shape their home.

The triennale has real potential to empower communities, but with curation that seems deliberately difficult, distant, and designed by academics for other academics, it not only disserves the architectural sector but could also be damaging. At a time when the political right positions academics, cultural workers, and architects as an elite to be opposed and controlled, there is a greater need than ever for genuine efforts to engage and work with diverse publics to clearly communicate how architectural issues intersect with everything people do and fight for.

Many of the Independent Projects and talks at the Lisbon Triennale successfully attempt this broader engagement and deserve celebration. With the poetry of artists, the language skills of writers, and genuine engagement with the city and institutions hosting the event, the main exhibitions might have achieved similar success. However, a 10-hour, deliberately challenging "horizontal landscape" of video presentations fails to meet this crucial objective of public engagement and accessibility.